The team sat back in the pits as rivals squabbled over provisional pole in the early minutes. Then Gasly emerged and backed up his commanding practice pace with a 1m25.662s lap that put him 0.685 seconds clear of previous benchmark Sergey Sirotkin.

Renault's Russian F1 tester Sirotkin managed to close in a touch later on, but Gasly trimmed a further 0.060s off his time to emphasise his advantage. He then went faster still through the first sector of a subsequent lap that faded.

Sirotkin held onto second, his ART car in a Prema sandwich between Gasly and Antonio Giovinazzi. That symmetry was completed by Sirotkin's team-mate Nobuharu Matsushita in fourth.

Norman Nato and Luca Ghiotto filled the remaining top six places, with 2014 Hungaroring GP2 winner Arthur Pic next up.

Championship leader Oliver Rowland had his worst qualifying performance of the year so far and was only 17th, three places behind fellow struggling title contender Mitch Evans.

Alex Lynn was among the front-runners early on, then went for his second run in the mid-session lull while most others were in the pits.

While last year that tactic delivered a pole that set him up for Saturday victory, this time he made an error and had a time deleted for a track limits infringement, so lines up only 11th.